OREANDA-NEWS. Speaking at the Bundestag, Chancellor Germany pleaded with citizens to drastically reduce the number of contacts. She urged her compatriots to do everything in their power to prevent the growth of diseases exponentially, otherwise they may regret their negligence. Merkel explained that if people have too many contacts, then their Christmas party with their grandparents may be the last for the elderly.

The chancellor criticized street vendors for hot mulled wine and waffles. In her opinion, this does not correspond to the arrangements for the sale of food to go.

On the eve, Angela Merkel held difficult but unsuccessful negotiations with regional leaders about the need to introduce even tighter restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19. Almost all participants in the virtual meeting do not agree to introduce additional restrictions before Christmas and have proposed postponing the tightening of the regime until 2021. Only in Bavaria and Saxony, without delay, a lockdown was introduced from Wednesday.

The Chancellor is concerned that 3,500 more people fall ill every day in the country than a week ago. A particularly alarming situation has developed in Saxony and Bavaria. By the way, tens of thousands of people from Russia and the CIS countries live here. In Bavaria, the regime is even stricter than in the state of emergency. It gives the authorities a lot of rights - from the imposition of a curfew to the entry into the living quarters of violators of the regime. In several towns, curfews have already been imposed.

The German government is allocating an additional 2.5 billion euros for pandemic prevention. Citizens over 60 years old from December 15 will be able to receive 3 masks per month free of charge.